1. Related Technical Fields
Related technical fields include navigation apparatus and methods, and more particularly, navigation apparatus and methods that write information into a portable storage medium and read information from the portable storage medium.
2. Related Art
Navigation apparatus that is capable of writing information into a portable storage medium and reading information from the portable storage medium is known. For example, a navigation apparatus may use a rewritable portable storage medium such as a PC card and have a memory driver for writing a item, generated in execution or a program in an operating system, into the portable storage medium and for reading it out from the portable storage medium for use in execution of the program. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. (“Kokai”) 11-325948 (cols. 0010-0024, FIGS. 1-4) discloses such a navigation apparatus.
The apparatus disclosed in Kokai 11-325948 reads out map data from a storage medium such as a CD-ROM. Data necessary for executing navigation functions for a route search and/or route guidance may be written into and read out from the portable storage medium. Consequently, if a user writes into the portable external storage medium the necessary input and/or instruction, the user may receive the navigation functions according to the input simply by inserting the portable external storage medium into a memory driver.